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Elias Bonaros has been visiting Cicada Mania since at least 2004 (see old message board archives and all posts about Elias on this site). I met him in person for the first time in 2013 during the Brood II cicada emergence. We have hung out many times since then, in search of cicadas. Elias is a true cicada enthusiast and autodidact. Not only does he discuss cicadas online, but he also befriends cicada experts, and seeks cicadas out in the real world, traveling as far as Fiji to find the 8-year periodical Nanai Cicadas. He is the real deal.
This summer Elias traveled to Cape May county, New Jersey to look for cicadas. Cape May has an abundance of cicada species. Let’s list them out: Neotibicen latifasciatus, Neotibicen linnei, Neotibicen lyricen, Megatibicen grossus, Neocicada hieroglyphica, Neotibicen tibicen, Magicicada septendecim, Magicicada cassini, and Neotibicen davisi. Neotibicen davisi aka Davis’ Southeastern Dog-Day Cicada is small as Neotibicen cicadas go. It sounds like an angle grinder grinding against concrete or metal. Its colors vary, but often include: black, brown, green, yellowish orange on its dorsal side, and tan and white on its abdomen. But never before BLUE. I double checked iNaturalst and BugGuide, but there are no blue N. davisi on either website.
I saw Elias’ photos of the blue N. davisi. They are indeed blue to turquoise-blue in color, importantly, even after molting and hardening. Cicada colors change quite a bit from the time they first molt to the time their skin fully hardens (sclerotizes) — but Elias’s cicadas were blue at the time of molting and after — the blue did not change to green, brown or black. If memory serves, I think he found three total.
While this discovery is incredibly rare, there is a reason why. If the cicada lacks the yellow carotenoid pigment, the blue biliverdin pigment dominates the color of the cicada. Without yellow, there are no browns, tans, greens and of course yellows. We see this phenomena in the Blue Moon morph of the normally green Green Grocer (Cyclochila australasiae) cicada in Australia.
To sum it up: Elias Bonaros, super cicada researcher, went to Cape May county, New Jersey in the summer of 2026 and found three or more ultra-rare blue Neotibicen davisi. To date, no one has published a photo of a blue N. davisi.
